Mykael texted me at ten am.I had been feeling dull, which is strange, because the day is anything BUTT!The day is absolutely bleeding with bright light, which automatically should make it come more alive, right?Unless it had the opposite effect~ washing it all out~ I believe the word that would serve this situation would be “homogenize”.But the light is NOT having a homogenizing effect.Maybe it is my lack of sleep that is causing the dull, low level fear and distance from the profound beauty.I have not been sleeping well at all.I used to be perturbed when I’d wake up at four am.Now two seems to be my first stop on the isomniac’s line.By the time five rolls in, I am done with this stupid concept called bed, called sleep.But then waking life becomes as much of a chore, because I feel strained and dingy from lack of sleep.Will I be able to nap this afternoon?I guess I won’t be publishing this entry…I guess it won’t make me $$$ the money that’ll rip me ridiculously dangerous, like a hairy band aide from my current poverty level status.Oh, well.At least I can afford coffee and kombucha.I should feel rich in that case.I should feel.That sure is a sentence stem lined with happy razor blades.The only question, is are they dull, or are they sharp?Dull ones are more painful, right?Then I’d have to vote for dull.Yeah, the kind of razor blade that will slice you the fuck open, before you even know what the fuck hit you.Suddenly, an entire specific segment of your body is warm… and oh!, wet, too… very dark red.That’s the way shoulds work.They sure get a bad-assed rap… but heck, maybe they even have their place.

I should engage in activities that create happiness.I should eat hecka veggies and whole grains.Come-on, I fuckin should.Because I feel better when I do, and I like to feel better, even if I seem to be addicted to feeling like shit.Because I do.And I have been a lot these days.I just remember Eric telling me about Amma’s biography.How she had the hardest fucking life, and the whole while, all she gave a flying fuck about was God realization, communion.Could that be ME?Could all these troubles be just the push I need to remember?I don’t even want to put any other words after the word “remember”, because I forgot what I’m supposed to remember.But the only thing I DO have going for me in the face of this conundrum, is that I remember that I forgot.I suppose I have a few more things going for me than that…like great friends.And new style mother lode dance studio.

Nathan and Max wanted to watch dance class last night, bless their warm and hecka fuzzy little innovative souls.So, just like old times, we wandered in off the street and settled in to watch the undercover ecstatic expression of soul pour thru the room full of Rockridgey dancers.Of course, Corey was leading the pack, with all the rhythm and funky soul in the whole world.And as I let the rolling splendor wash over me, I felt into how much I’m gonna miss the little microcosmic pocket called NewStlyleMotherlode.Fuck.I wanted to fall apart.I might as well have considered losing an arm and a leg.That is life at it’s best.What a stupid thing to say.“That is life at it’s best”.Come on Athena, pick up the slack.You have an imagination, USE IT!(you wouldn’t believe what a fucking relief it is to let that cold, hardened voice out of the prison of my lonely head.I want everyone to know.I am coming out of the closet as a masochistic, ironfisted, self-hater!I guess, if you didn’t have all your attention on yourself, that would be pretty obvious… but since most of the world is ego-centric, it’s possible that that one could have escaped you.

I feel so sad.I feel so lonely.I feel so tired.It seems, from my light-drenched seat here at Hudson Bay, that a blended mocha would really help.

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!~ I’ve just undergone a massive gear shift!I gave myself the blended mocha with a mountain of whipped cream!Then I switched to my favorite seat~ the little table closest to the windows.And the final touch, the cherry on the top was the music switch from tori amos to Leonard cohen’s newer stuff.Currently streaming in my ear is “Waiting for the Miracle”.Mister Cohen is profoundly dark and light at the same time.It befuddles me.I can’t believe that the word “befuddle” is in the dictionary (it’s not underlined in RED… but some of the other words I love to use are not… too bad I can’t come up with any examples on the fly, because that would certainly empower my writing.Oh well, there’s always tomorrow, or a minute from now, or…)

On another subject, WHO THE FUCK IS THIS GUY THAT I’M GONNA MOVE TO FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA WITH????I think I must be absolutely insane.I’d be better off in Hawaii alone.I am feeling so let down in relationship right now.Totally abandoned.My feelings are perpetually hurt.I know that Mykael did not do a fucking thing, but this little three year old is screaming and starving and insatiable inside me, and I don’t know who I am in the face of her blinding need and pain.When I get to the other side of it, I could be in fucking Flagstaff with a man that it seems I fell in love with… back in the olden days when epic-fairytale romances were the new black.But inside me, the trend seems to be misery and islolation now, more than love.God, I hope it slides out of fashion quick enough.Do I?That’s debatable.It’s so familiar here, alone on this day washed in illegal amounts of sunshine.

My blended mocha is over.I miss it.It is always so devastating when a good thing ends.Especially food and drinks.Drinks.Then food.It’s gone, and I was happy for a moment, but not long enough.I still feel exhausted, even after two shots of espresso.And I still feel hungry, even after all those cursed empty calories.Why does everything feel so right, even in the face of all these potentially detrimental circumstances?I can’t explain it, but I am aware of a deeper strength.Perhaps it’s what some people dig calling “the Eternal” …But I feel so aware of the fleeting, temporary nature of everything right now.And I believe that all these questions and struggles are seasoning my heart and soul for the ultimate romance.For the most intoxicating and sustainable love.Let it thrash me, because who I am is undestructable.Who I am is pure, unarguable magic and beauty.There is an awareness in me that is surfacing, from such depths.

I just got sick of Leonard Cohen, and I switched to that Kate Bush song, “This woman’s work”.Now I want to cry again.But not just a casual sprinkle of tears, I mean like full throttle sobbing.That’s a good name for a band, “Full Throttle Sob”… don’t you think?

I somehow feel like all the random, flighty revelations of my mind are somehow an offering.That somehow, they are an access point to freedom.To YOUR freedom.Not just mine.The way that I must let go, to let my life, my Self FLY across this page… somehow I believe in these frivolous words.I want to set you free.My heart actually ACHES to set you free.My nose burns, my tear ducts spit wet salt onto skin.It feels so good to stand here.True, I’m really sitting, but metaphorically standing, I mean.I feel a million feet tall when I stand for your freedom.

It was one of those days that was bound to result in bloodshed.Ivy rested tensely in her seat on the perfectly crowded bus, seething.Seething?Well, the feeling was like one of those science fair, build your own volcano projects.Her interior contained all the necessary ingredients for the climactic little eruption:vinegar and baking soda.Was there anything else?… I’ve never actually made one… I DID, however make “oobleck”… the perfect combination of cornstarch and water, that can be experienced as BOTH solid and liquid.If you grab it fast, it is entirely solid, but once you hold it in your hand, it oozes with sensual innocence right thru your fingers.

Could Ivy’s internal state be analogous to oobleck?Yes!Because though she was inevitably solid and finite this day, this anti climactic bus ride, but, too, she felt to be melting elusively thru the cracks in her own mind; the sweeping valleys that breathed dangerous life into her emotional scapes.But let’s travel back to the volcano theory.For a woman who had always been prone to self indulgent melancholy and hyper self reflection induced depression, today she felt markedly angry.Fierce.As she made her way to the bus stop, she imagined herself a tigress, held captive in a human body, and ready to pounce and devour at any and every instant.

Ivy was so pissed, if she had’ve spat, the wet little gob would’ve burst into flames before it hit the ground.Or, more accurately, the floor of the ACTransit bus that was slinking it’s way along telegraph avenue, thru a soupy November morning.Ivy’s anger was the brightest color on this grayest of days.If you’d have viewed her anger thru special infrared, anger viewing goggles, you would have seen a turquoise so flaming and enchanted, you would know without a doubt it was inhabited by an obnoxious band of psychedelic elves.

Fuck this.I thought I’d be able to get back into my novel, but the world of my novel holds no weight, compared to the reality that presses me into the grill from all sides.I feel like one of the pannini sandwiches they are serving up here at Guerilla Café.Pardon me while I inspect my bare skin, in search of the neat, evenly spaced little black grill marks.If I were a paninni sandwich, my insides would melt and squish out the sides of me.If I were a paninni sandwich, I’d be able to seduce anyone into anything.Maybe I can, anyway…

I am so tempted to be a whore today.That’s why I wanted to write a novel where the main character was a whore.So that I could live it, without really having to live it.Dawn took short cuts.Athena makes muddy messes.Athena pulls up her sleeves and pulls down her pants, and is willing to get dirty.Soul dirty.I say that… because on the page, I am FREE.I can stand for anything, stand inside of any shade of danger, and remain pristine.But what would it really BE like to have a desperate cock pumping in and out of my pussy?What would it be like to open my womb to the masculine ache of the world?Chances are, that I already know.

M (I’m gonna abbreviate his name, since he’s sitting right to my right),M is showing up so pathetic today.Is that why I want to leave him?I am absolutely not attracted to him in this moment.He looks like he’s fallen apart at the seams.Beans and feathers and little bits of strafome are cascading from the cracks in his flesh.In this moment, I wonder why the fuck I have chosen to bind myself to him.Bind.Yoga= to yolk.Yoga as the choice of to what we bind ourselves in this life.If I were single, I’d be a prostitute.Maybe it would fuck me up beyond belief… but maybe not.I’d certainly write about it.And you know what?I’d live in my own apartment.And I’d keep studying yoga.I’d hire a personal coach, and create some goals and structures that would keep my life powerfully on track.I’d see Amy Taylor, and have an hour a week that was entirely devoted to my healing.To my free flowing energetic rivers.I would have fluorescent pink walls.I would have a vast, open space for me to dance whenever, however, ever-ry moment.Fuck, would I dance!And I’d get a little Chihuahua, who would come all around with me.A little dog with big balls~ figurative balls, because his literal balls would be MIA, for sure.

Oh, here comes another wave of violence.Because I can SEE that world so clearly.That world where I have a fucking immense bathtub~ probably a claw foot tub.And a mother fucking gas stove.I can hear a voice, suggesting modestly that my words would be a lot more powerful if I would just cut out the gratuitous mother fucks and such.But then what would I do with all this fire???Where would it go?I would burn my insides down.Maybe that’s what’s called for… Maybe if I just burned my insides down, I’d have more space to exist.But for now, I must spray this blow torch of flaming fucks.I know, I’ll explore alternative ways of expressing.I’ll say it with a fuck AND with a neo-erudite-enlightened twist as well, and then YOU can be the mother fucking judge.You can be the blessed judge.The god fearing, iron-fisted, bling sporting, tennis club, trust fund baby judge, mkay?

Why do I want to roundhouse kick the world?Why do I want to knock the motha fucking wind out of her highness, Life?(Why do I want to knock the wet, oozing, pussy wind out of Life?The teen pregnancy, high school drop-out wind… The filthy, diseased, wanna be first-lady-fucking breeze out of Life)

I just want to stumble on the treasure map.I scan the ground when I walk, looking for crumpled, green bills.Ask me how embarrassed I was to admit that in writing.I dunno who’s ever gonna read any of this, but if it was YOU, my tail would involuntarily disappear between my legs.You would never see my tail again, unless, it happened that you were trekking thru the mountains of Japan… what are they called?Mount Fuji, right?And you’d see a once exhalted tigress tail flailing helplessly amist the mountainous rubble.“Hey!Is that… Is that… Why YES, it IS, it’s Athena’s tail!!!”Maybe that’s what I’ll write my novel about.About a Japanese trekker who finds the former, escapee tail of an ashamed, would-be writer.A lost soul, who spends her days scouring the earth for the map that can guide her back to the essential piece that she vowed to lose, as she incarnated.And the sickest part of this nauseating plot, is that the booty this blindly divine creature is searching for, is right inside.Right at the core of the heart of the soul of the ISness that is her SHEness.But thanks to our good olde infallible friend, the law of attraction, I found two whole dollars on the ground yesterday!TWO WHOLE MOTHER FUCKING DOLLARS!!!Two heavy breathing, soul-squeezing, dream-drenched dollars.

And then I spent them on a bloody bus ride.I’m gonna skip the mother fuck this time around and go straight for the literary jugular.I blew my first point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero (how many zeros would preceed the decimal point to dissect a million into small enough parts to violently squeeze it into two measly dollars?) million on a frivolous ride in a dirty blue seat, to sixty dollar haircut appointment.You know what it felt like?It felt like a first time, long anticipated fuck with a hot lover, who splooges all over the entrance to my pussy, without even succeeding to penetrate me at all.

I could have ridden my blasted bike, and saved the two crunched up, hallow-ed dollars for… for… two copies of the Street Sheet.One fuyu persimmon.(they’ve just come into season… and it is my mission to eat as many as I can in this modest window of autumn, in which they exist.)I could have bet on the winning horse, or bought a pen that brings me particular pleasure to write with…But I flushed it down the public transportation toilet.

You know what Heimlich maneuvered the tears right out of my guts this morning, as I embodied the ferociously bounding, unapologetic tigress, toward the bus stop?A single burning pink rose.Words.They can be so fucking obtuse and clunky.I’m whipping out my machete, and I’m gonna hack miracles free from this linguistic underbrush, so that you may see and feel the strange psychedelic grace that smacked into me like a brick wall on hot wheels.I was traveling thru demented ghettos in my head, and even more intrepid emotional scapes.My world was an inevitable tragedy, not even hesitating to happen.And then a cluster of colorful images rushed at my eyes.They poured into my eye sockets, and made their way with brazen immediacy straight into a little sexy oasis pocket of my soul.It felt like the most pleasant and sassy slap imaginable!

Missus Nobody, Herself, might as well’ve thrown a fist full of radio active glitter at me!This single pink rose… think artificial flavors, colors, the whole fluorescent disco princess shebang!Her stem was long, like a tightrope stretched across a sizable chunk of eternity, reminiscent of an elegant, tribal woman’s neck, that had been stretched to give a baby giraffe a run for it’s money.This pink seductress, though, would have been nobody, without the innocent benevolence of the maddeningly perfect backdrop.Think bleeding, sea green crayon.Now think horizontal siding on a large, Victorian house.

Have you ever taken psychodelics?Because this scene shimmered like a mirage in the distance.It looked like a singing, dancing telegram from a very sexy, well-fucked goddess, visiting from a much kinder, though kinky world.

If you REALLY wanted to know EVERYTHING (aka~ the secrets of the universe), all you’d have to do is LOOK at the faces of our fellow humans. I believe that our faces are the maps of this vast, galactic territory. I was setting up camp in the front window of Hudson Bay this morning, and I saw a bus whizzing down college avenue. It was sparsely populated, but I did recognize the woman who works as a cashier at Cactus Taqueria. She’s probably Mexican. She has a round face. But not fat, round. She just looks like she’s related to the man in the moon.

(I just have to say that I have been debating getting a chocolate biscotti since I parked here, and I’d say it’s been on the argumentative side of debate.) I want to write a book about bus drivers. I will dedicate my life to riding busses for like six months, and have conversations with all my drivers, and turn them into REAL human beings. God, that sounds fucking awesome!!! I could do that with all kinds of “ordinary” people~ librarians and gas station attendants. NO, Athena, just stick to busses. It’s just that from my vantage point inside this fish bowl, I have seen like three busses drive by, and each of the drivers looked so real and soulful and intriguing. But lemme herd the yowling, emaciated stray cats of my mind back to their hitching post so I can tell you that I caved in and got myself the fucking biscotti, because it was consuming WAY too much of my thought space. Territory that I needed for writing. Sometimes the REWARD game works for me. You know, telling myself that when I hit a thousand words, THEN I can have my cursed biscotti. That really works for less obsessive, impulsive people- like Eric, for example. But for me, I am relentless and consumed by my desire until I fulfill it. I raped and pillaged my crunchy little stick of sophisticated cookie until it was no more, and now, thank Heavens, I am temporarily satiated, and can pour this passionate stream of self into words and visions and quirky, abstract ideas…)

So yeah, the mujer from Cactus looks like the man in the moon’s mama. Usually she’s the one who takes my order, and every time, my heart breaks because I can feel the unsettling strength of her soul.I can see on her face a star-lit map of frightening and unjust labryth scapes she has wandered to find herself behind the cash register at Cactus Taqueria in Rockridge, serving moderate quality “Mexican food” to privileged mostly white families with posies of adorable, spoiled, snot nosed small people.It is obvious that in other dimensions, she is a priestess, a shaman, a seer.Her soul is ancient and tough, and I wonder if she trusts her voice. I see a genuine roar, reverberating deep within her large, weather-beaten, bovine eyes.Any way, I saw her on the bus.She was slumped down in a crumpled pile~ the kind of pile one inevitably slouches into when life weighs a cruel and merciless amount.Seeing/feeling her, in addition to feeling my way thru the abandoned, wounded, grief stricken territory of my own inner three year old was on the brinkish cusp of TOO MUCH.Why is that woman vivid in my sight?She’s weighty, like her life is at least a few lives packed into one human shell.God, please bless her.

I say that, “God, please bless her,” and then immediately I think, what an absolutely ignorant FOOL I am to assume that God HASN’T blessed her.Of course God has blessed her.I just have a very straight-laced idea of what God’s blessings look like, so I immediately and unconsciously lump her into the category of those whom God has overlooked, either accidentally, or worse yet, out of some ancient, spiteful vendetta.I suspect God might actually have one of those with ME.I wouldn’t have admitted it until yesterday.Last night, Brad picked me up from work, and we sat outside my house in his borrowed biodiesel Mercedes.Upon opening my mouth, I realized I was full up with negativity!Oh surprise of surprises!So I asked him if I could have one to two minutes to just go off and complain.He said he already knew it all.I told him I just needed space to vent.He said sure.I WENT OFFF!But I couldn’t stop after two minutes, because what was under the hardened complaints was a goopey lake of grief.Like one of those pimples that you squeeze, and at first you think it’s just gonna be hard, white gunk, but after a stubborn steam of that is expressed, THEN comes the wet, stewy stuff.Out of ONE wretched little pore.One fucking wretched little pore.That’s me.I cried and cried, and suddenly, I was calling God a mother fucker, and let me just tell you, I felt FREE.I did.Because this “God” character has let me suffer for a long-assed time.

This God character conceived me so fresh and new and tender, and while I had no skin, I was passed thru the hands of unfamiliar, careless and highly checked-out people. (while I am writing, there is a baby crying to my left. She’s in one of those little carriers. She is tender, like a bread loaf that has not baked long enough to form a sincere crust. She’s all doughy insides. Her older brother (he must be somewhere between three and four) is rocking her, attending to her devotionally, attempting to pacify her cries. Mom must be powdering her nose. It is the most fundamentally heart-melting scene.) Listen, I don’t want to get over dramatic here. My aim is to tell you that it felt so good to name and own my grievances with God. What a fucking relief to finally get off the exhausting hamster wheel of muscling my way thru my relationship with the divine. Sure, fine, let communion with the One take self-effort and discipline… but its gotta be the labor of LOVE! Not just your average, run of the mill warring struggle. “Oh, if I say a Bazillion more mantras, then I might get to nibble on a moldy, stale crumb of God’s infinite bliss…” What the FUCK is that? Love should be a little more bloody generous, don’t you think?

I recognize that I am flailing around, thirsting in the sweetest Ocean. Profound faith is implicit in me.Entirely.I find it impossible to doubt that God is real and inside of everything, and outside as well, and undoubtedly an esteemed ambassador of my success and soul-fulfillment… But there has been a quintessential disconnect, and it drives me CRAZY.It drives God crazy too.And we are both committed to getting to the bottom of it… But in the mean time, last night, I threw a mild and long overdue tantrum out of sheer exhaustion and quintessential betrayal.Why if I am swimming in Grace, do I feel like I am perpetually drowning and suffocating?What the fuck is Grace anyway?I have adopted the stinkin word as my blessed las name, you’d think I’d have a better handle on the matter.

I now wish to be called by my middle name, Athena, because when I speak my first name, “Dawn”, it rushes forth in an elusive, etherial whisper, before merging organically with the sky. This delicate and worn flower of a name behaves as though she is inflated with helium, eager to be uttered, so she can drift hOMe, beyond the clouds, into the star-strewn Beyond. An essential facet of me, is left alienated and screaming to be acknowledged, revealed, cultivated, nurtured, challenged.

Now, nearly seven months abiding in my snazzy new syllables, this “upgraded” (yet still under massive construction) rendition of me, Athena, is being challenged, tested, called out on a daily basis.The “Dawnie” aftermath is reminiscent of a city decimated by explosives.I clamber thru archaic memories, old pictures, and peoples’ bottomless well of outdated perceptions of me. Glamorous as the job may be, I’m resigning (at least for now) from being the etheric fairy princes version of Johnny Appleseed, wafting like incense smoke in the stratosphere, scattering fistfuls of glitter all over everything.

I am here on the page this November morning, to declare myself. To boldly drive my staff into the yielding earth and claim Athena. Here I stand, a vulnerable and fierce warrior goddess… feeling pissed. It fucking pisses me off when people try to engage with Dawnie and become defensive when they are met with substance, opposition.

WWAD?What would Athena do?That is the question I am here to explore this day, under this hazy autumn sky.And why do I want to cry?I suppose that shouldn’t concern me.Athena cries when she feels to.Athena, what will you do in the face of this continuous stream of confusion that life is spewing forth?Dawn would have laid down in the intrepid waters and implored them to drown her, while simultaneously waiting and hoping that someone would come and lift her out of the suffocating tides of her own God-given life.Dawn was a seemingly endless daisy chain of poetic collapse.Dawn beseeched the world to save her.Dawn was certain that life owed her.Dawn was committed to denying that her seat on planet earth was the ultimate blessing.It is Athena’s duty to surrender, and be resurrected by a universal and benevolent messiah: Gratitude.

When Mykael first called me out as a default ingrate, I felt ashamed and defensive. I felt daunted and confronted by his declared mission to attune me to gratitude. How, I wondered, could I lift my entire orientation, and flip it upside down. I, who can not lift an elephant, or even a large meat lovers pizza with extra cheese… I who have yet to master the art of relinquishing the weight of the world, instead taking a primary stand for my own integrity, authenticity and inner peace. Days pass, and the inquiry of cultivating an internal garden of gratitude continues to percolate and ripen inside me. How does one grow any garden? Commitment, love, dedication, HARD WORK. Pull some weeds, plant some seeds… then rest a while in the hammock with a blue bottle cappucino and a hand-rolled smoke. (That last part was an embittered joke. I don’t want to be smoking. But stopping feels like Chinese water torture. I wonder if Chinese water torture is really so awful, anyway… what do they do?… Just dribble water down the tingling skin of some naughty little citizen? Is that really so bad? Would it prevent one from reenacting unsavory behavior???)

I have a severe compulsion to call Mykael right now. Noon. Monday. We got in yet another fight last night. That seems to be our favorite past time these days. I expressed my deep desire to meet the day when we shared a bed. When it was “Our” bed. Our sacred space… when sleeping together was not an overwhelming juggling act of compromises and concessions. I felt so vulnerable saying that. And suspicious, too. Like WHO is it, who is in the driver’s seat when I speak that way? I’m afraid it’s good olde obsolete Dawniecakes. The little girl who wilts in a tremulous, knee knocking pile at the thought of being responsible, hard-working, structured and self-reliant… But her downy voice still cries out from a deep, ancient ache in my heart. On one hand, I want this pain to be okay… because it feels real. Certainly more real that some high-horsed construct of how I should feel, what I should want, what would be good for me. I don’t want to bombard the tender feeling, even if its source IS a scared little girl. But if my need to be held and safe thru the night is indeed born of a frightened child, it’s probably not the place that I want to live from. How do I give her space, give her a voice, give her safety and nurturing, and still stand tall, strong and independent?

So there we were in Falcon, subdued-emerald jeep charokee, heading down the hill, into the Mission, toward a destination-yet-to-be-determined. His bed or mine? The prevalent desire welling up inside me was to be naked and warm and safe in his lucid-dream-blue, cloud puff of a bed. But that would mean leaving my precious, sentient feline, Anjali alone for the second night in a row. That would mean less of a likelihood that I’d poop in the morning. That would mean relinquishing my rhythm, which is a potent source and anchor in my life. Am I justifying? I am envisioning you checking out right about now. Are you reviewing your mental list of to-dos, thinking “This is really interesting… but I have a ton to accomplish today… honestly, I want to know about your noble and sincere inner conflicts, Dawnie~ I mean Athena… but…”

Deep Breath.I spoke the words “OUR bed”, and was immediately interrupted by his fervent exclamation, “MY bed.It will always be MY bed!”I stopped short, and my tail not only swept with urgent immediacy between my legs, but sucked back into the holy abyss of its origin.I felt mortified.Why?I am still trying to unfurl that one.I think because there is this place where he is unconscious, or perhaps I am unconscious, and he is a very accurate mirror… this place where he or me or we are terrified to fully let go into our choosing of one another.Of partnership, co-creation.

I have been tangled in a construct called “I need to attain a deep level of personal integrity and independence before I can give myself over entirely to the relationship”.But then, too, I want nothing more than to be entirely held by Life, by God, by my Man.I feel so afraid, uncertain.Terrified to stand up and wield my machete with feigned confidence and bold, deliberate strokes.Needless to say, I chopped off his head, and then silently pouted for the rest of our dark, nocturnal navigation to my doorstep. This morning, I awoke with a heart still dripping with ache… Feeling angry and defensive.I told myself that I would not see him today.That I’d wait for him to call me.And now it’s one two three four o’clock (some of you might recognize this specific location in time as 12:34pm), and I have already checked my phone sixty bazillion times to see if there is a text from him, or a missed call.No such luck… though I know that he is thinking of me, feeling me, because I am becoming attuned to the subtle nuances of my inner life, my innate connection to all beings, especially those closest to my heart.

Which brings us back to the pressing matter at hand.Who is this creature, Athena?For what does she stand?Athena.She is unapologetic in her convictions.SHE IS UNAPPOLOGETIC IN HER CONVICTIONS.I had to write that twice, because it felt deeply true and important.As I was trudging along the sidewalk, through the fresh layer of brown, disembodied oak leaves, I felt into the exhaustion that it is to carry all these externally imposed images of myself.I feel a strong pull to return to that which is essential.That which arises from Inside (antara, in sanskrit). Athena is willing to take a bold stand, even if it creates opposition with other agendas and viewpoints.Athena is willing to risk discomfort and disapproval.Athena is committed to her path, to knowing and acting from her own heart.Athena listens inwardly.Always.

Athena knows her own strength.Her life is a testament to that.Athena is willing to fail.Athena is willing to succeed.Athena is able to disengage from perfectionism so that she can LIVE FULLY NOW.Athena is willing to renounce safety and comfort in moments when commitment to her greater vision and purpose is required.Athena thrives in structure.Athena sets clear boundaries.Athena is unapologetic for her truth.Athena is fierce.Athena is willing to make mistakes in the name of growth, learning, leadership, creative process.Athena takes responsibility for her actions, cleans up her messes with an open heart and moves on.Athena is a well of forgiveness and compassion for herself and others.

Athena is committed to living alone for 6 months to a year. Athena is willing to be contributed to by others. Athena is a feisty bitch sometimes. Athena recognizes her powerful contribution to community, and takes her seat as a leader, a visionary, a sorceress, with honor and humility. Athena is not afraid to fuck up sometimes.

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